


I can call you all day

by taka1114



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Phone Calls & Telephones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:54:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26373046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taka1114/pseuds/taka1114
Summary: “Stark Ind.. How may I help you?”“Hello, ” replied Steve, “I'd like to speak to Tony Stark.”
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 1
Kudos: 103





	I can call you all day

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [I can call you all day](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26356876) by [taka1114](https://archiveofourown.org/users/taka1114/pseuds/taka1114). 



> Somehow I tried to translate my own work into English and here's what I did.

“Hello.”  
“Hello, I would...”  
“Thank you for calling Stark Industry customer service. For telecommunication services, please press...”  
Steve was confused at first, then he laughed at how he’s lagging behind in the era. These days, in a company like this, who still hires receptionists? He waited until the prerecorded instruction mentioned about “contacting our crew”, then pressed 0.  
“You will soon be redirected to our customer service crew, please wait.”  
There was a moment of music on hold, then someone else picked up.

“Stark Ind.. How may I help you?”  
“Hello, ” replied Steve, “I'd like to speak to Tony Stark.”  
The clerk was silent for a moment, seemingly confused by what he said. That wasn’t unexpected, as Steve was like a difficult customer, who required to speak to the manager right after he entered a restaurant.  
“Excuse me sir. What might be the issue you are having?”  
“Um...”  
“Sir, this is the customer service. I believe our team is capable of helping you with your issue. How may I help you?” Somehow, this lady from the other side managed to keep her friendliness, but at the same time give him the “if you don’t need help you may hang up now” feeling.  
“Uh, you know what? Wrong number, I’m sorry. Bye.” He hung up.

Then he stared at the number with an extra 0 on his phone, giving himself a thought for a while, and decided to try again.

“Thank you for calling Stark Industry customer service. For...” He pressed 0.  
The same music played, then someone picked up. Thanks to god, it wasn’t the same person.  
“Stark Ind.. How may I help you?”  
“Hello. I would like to speak to Ironman.” This time he tried to put it another way.  
Same silence, so he added, “I am Captain America.”  
“Ha, very funny, sir. How may I help you?”  
Clearly they had received so many calls like this, and weren’t buying it anymore. Steve wasn’t sure how he’s supposed to feel about this.

“I’m serious. It’s about the...mission. Yes, the Avenger’s mission. I need to contact him.” He made some random things up, and immediately regretted it.  
“Sir, if you don’t need any help, I’m gonna hang up, okay?” The clerk obviously felt the same.  
“I do need help. Listen, I’m Steve Rogers, and I need...” A dull, heartless beep sound indicated that he was cut off.

He grabbed a handful of hair frustratedly. I’ve definitely been regarded as one of those phone pranksters, he thought. How come no one believes in truths nowadays?  
He looked at his notebook, full of doodles drawn when he’s waiting for the call. He found an eye he drew subconsciously. He got even more frustrated when he recognised whose eye it was, so he started to write down some thoughts on it.

After finishing the notes, he called that number again. This time he had the whole plan for it, including how it was about dealing with potential threats from Hydra, or who was on the team. However, when Steve thought the clerk was considering the information he provided, the response disagreed.  
“Dude, if Cap really has an emergency, why on earth is he calling us?” The clerk hung up before he could even react.  
Despite the discouragement, Steve was inspired to try something else.

He called the customer service again (and started to be grateful of how it was a prerecorded message). He didn’t press 0, instead he took notes for an alternative to reach the senior department. And he found the science team. 

As an internal group, the science department didn’t have a customer service hotline as the others. Steve had to look for another way to contact them. It was even harder than taking down the entire Hydra network, he thought. But that made sense, since the one who did it was exactly the one he’s looking for.

Fortunately, he recalled a recruitment program Peter Parker had mentioned. That was a program Stark Ind. launched in order to recruit talented scientists, except it didn't exist until Peter used it as an excuse to his aunt for coming home late (and everyone knows the actual reason). Steve searched it up on the internet. He realised that though the internet was like an encyclopedia, which your questions were never too weird to have an answer, you couldn't be sure it worked the same for the answers as well. Before the whole phone scam incident, he had searched "how to meet Tony Stark" and got useless answers such as "make yourself a cover girl".

Ironically, it was those poor clerks from the customer service team who gave him the contact. He told the nice lady that he was a helpless single father, who had a really smart son. The genius boy wanted so bad to enter the largest scientific research department as an intern, and that was one of the few things his father could do for him.  
“I’m so sorry that it isn’t something we can decide.” The clerk named Elise sounded sincerely sorry for him, which made Steve feel bad about telling the lie. “But, well, here’s the number of the program manager. Maybe you can try to call him. Hope that helps.”

He made the call, and found the person in charge. That was a scientist called Dave. He introduced his speciality while Steve could only pretend that he understood. Tony didn’t seem to pay much attention to this program after Peter got what he wanted. From how Dave reacted to this, Steve guessed it’s more like a scholarship or a fund that you invested in and watched it run by itself. He had no idea how many departments like this were there in this company, not even at the time when Howard was in charge.

He named himself Chris (as it was one of the most overused names), and told Dave that he’s got some new scientific research to show to Tony Stark.  
“Oh, wow, great.” Dave sounded surprised, “What kind of research?”  
“I, uh, can’t reveal much.” Steve answered ambiguously, “but I need to contact Tony...Mr. Stark. This is important.”  
“Well, you know, I’m not that kind of employee who always gets to see the boss. Even if I’m gonna tell him, I need at least to know what it’s about, right?”  
“That’s uh, about quantum mechanics, with biological studies. It’s complicated.” He had no idea if he’s making any sense. But first, the word “quantum” sounded quite complicated already; Second, he learnt those words from the conversation between Tony and Bruce, so he must have pronounced them correctly; And last, the only thing that Steve understood from Dave’s self introduction was that he was a doctor of chemistry, and last time he checked, it was not the in the same category as physics or biology. He sincerely hoped that not everyone in this department was a polymath.

“Oh.” Dave sounded disappointed. Steve almost cheered for it, until he added, “I would try to comprehend.”  
“That’s, um, don’t mind if I say, you wouldn’t be able to.” He hated to sound like an arrogant scientist, especially when Dave was such a nice man. Yet he really needed to get this part done, or else he would definitely get caught.  
“Try me, and if I don’t get it, I’ll...”  
“It’s about quantum entanglement, applied to gene arrangement, with tiny robots, kind of stuff.” He decided to let it go, gathering all the scientific vocabularies popping up to his mind, and tried to make them sound like a thing that exists.  
"So this is, nanotech?"  
“Yea, nano, um, but not just this, of course. It’s much more complicated, and those quarks.”  
“Quarks?”  
“Yup.” Steve wasn’t even sure if that’s a word.  
“I’m not sure that I follow.”  
“Exactly. Please help me contact Mr. Stark. He would understand it.”

Dave hesitated, he could feel that. This whole conversation had probably just wounded his self-esteem as a scientist, and Steve felt sorry about him. Once this was done, he had to make up for him.  
“...I’d try to report this to my senior, but I can’t guarantee anything.” Dave paused and then added, “To be frank, not many people are still doing this now. You know, with the internet, everyone got a platform to express themselves.”  
“I prefer the old fashioned ways.”  
“Interesting, as you sounded younger than me.”

Dave then redirected the call to a senior manager, and Steve repeated everything with him, except that he added some more terms like “quantum tunnelling effect” and “neutron radiation”. The manager seemed less approachable. He highly doubted what Steve said, and required him to send some reports of the research, so that the professionists of the department could examine it.  
“You don’t understand. It’s not that simple.”  
“We will decide after we have your report, sir.”  
“No...” Steve grinded, processing what to reply, “...You know what? The report you asked for, I handed it to Pepper at the seminar last week. She asked me to contact you.”  
“Ms. Potts?”  
“That’s her.”  
“We didn’t get the notice.”  
“You can ask her about the guy from Brooklyn, who studies ‘Stony particles’.”  
He was pretty sure that the manager hadn’t heard about it, as the manager put him on hold doubtfully. By the way, one thing that Steve learnt today was that the music on hold in this company was all the same.

The call went back after a while.  
“Ms. Potts said we could put you through to Mr. Stark’s office.” The manager just couldn’t believe what happened.  
“Please tell Ms. Potts, I appreciate her help.” Steve replied sincerely, “Yours too.”  
“Ms. Potts specifically asked me to tell you that although she didn’t understand the complicated science, she admired your perseverance on this research.”  
“I’m flattered.”  
“I’ll now put you through.”

Just one more step, Steve thought. His nervousness almost leaked out from the melody he hummed with the music on hold.  
The music stopped.  
“Hello.”  
He took a deep breath.  
“Tony.”  
“...Steve?” He could almost picture how the man surprisedly frowned.  
“Please don’t hang up. I’ve tried so long to call you.” He spoke before Tony could react further.  
“God, how did you even get here?”

Steve spent about 15 minutes talking about how he got from the customer service team to here. Fortunately, Tony didn’t hang up when he did.

Pepper probably had figured that they had a fight again, Steve thought as he came up with the Stony thing. If they had gained something from this relationship, that would be the superpower to argue about everything. This time was no different, they had a fight on the mission. Steve accused Tony of not following orders, while Tony blamed that his orders were rigid and inflexible. Getting pissed, Steve had probably gone too far, as he said, “maybe you should try to be responsible for your own company first.” Acting as a response to it, Tony Stark returned to his office in Stark Ind.. He even attended the regular meeting which he claimed to be boring as hell. And meanwhile, he turned off his phone.

Tony didn’t seem to care how the others feel about him. There were at least a dozen media in the United States digging for bad news about a celebrity like him, but he didn’t seem to give a damn about them. That was how Steve realised, after listening to the voicemail greeting for two weeks, that this ignorance didn’t apply to himself.

Tony kept his mouth shut when he listened, but after mentioning “quantum entanglement” and “Stony particles”, Steve could hear some noise which sounded just like a chuckle.  
“That’s it. So I really hate to bother them any further, please don’t hang up.”  
There was a quiet moment before Tony replied with his muffled voice.  
“So are scientists all arrogant bastards to you?”  
“Tony, I’m not here to fight.” said Steve, in low spirits, “I’m sorry for saying that to you.”  
He heard a sigh.  
“Let me tell you something.”

“I did something to my phone, so that it blocked all the calls from you. That’s why you kept hearing the message, telling you my phone was turned off. Welcome to the 21st century.”  
“Hmm.” Steve answered confusedly, “So?”  
Tony took a deep breath.  
“So all you had to do was just to call me through a payphone. My phone wouldn’t notice, and I would have been saved from those boring meetings. Two weeks, Steve Rogers, two fucking weeks.”  
“Language.”  
“From a man who just cheated my scientist.” Tony retorted, “Tell me, did this thing use up your annual lying quota?”  
“Somebody said I should learn to be flexible.”  
“Whoever said that, he’s a genius.”  
Steve smiled, feeling himself relieved from the tension he was having all the way.

“Let me tell you something too. I might just happen to memorise the entire customer service message.”  
“Should I be impressed by your memory or your stubbornness?”  
“Maybe both. I can call you all day.”

END.

**Author's Note:**

> I was inspired by a Stony clip of a game play, but the work turned out to be unrelated at all hahaha  
> Hope you found Steve charming when he was so determined to make the phone call, just like Tony did:P


End file.
